Myers' Psychology for the AP® Course, Unit 4 Study Notes
Unit 4: Key Concepts in Psychology
Person Perception
Person Perception: How we form impressions of ourselves and others, including the attributions we make regarding behavior.
Attribution Theory
Attribution Theory: This theory explains someone’s behavior by attributing it either to the situation (a situational attribution) or to the person's stable, enduring traits (a dispositional attribution).
Fundamental Attribution Error
Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency for observers to underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition when analyzing others' behavior.
Actor-Observer Bias
Actor-Observer Bias: The tendency for those acting in a situation to attribute their own behavior to external causes, while observers attribute the behavior of others to internal causes. This contributes to the fundamental attribution error.
Prejudice
Prejudice: An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members, often involving negative emotions, stereotyped beliefs, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.
Stereotypes
Stereotype: A generalized belief about a group of people, which can be accurate but is often overgeneralized.
Discrimination
Discrimination: Unjustifiable negative behavior directed toward a group or its members.
Just-World Phenomenon
Just-World Phenomenon: The belief that the world is just, leading people to assume that individuals get what they deserve.
Social Identity
Social Identity: The 'we' aspect of self-concept that comes from group memberships, answering the question, "Who am I?".
Ingroup and Outgroup
Ingroup: "Us" - people with whom we share a common identity.
Outgroup: "Them" - those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup.
Ingroup Bias
Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor our own group over others.
Scapegoat Theory
Scapegoat Theory: The theory suggesting that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.
Other-Race Effect
Other-Race Effect: The tendency to remember faces of one's own race more accurately than those of other races; also known as the cross-race effect and own-race bias.
Attitudes
Attitudes: Feelings that predispose us to respond in particular ways to objects, people, and events, often influenced by beliefs.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to later comply with a larger request.
Role
Role: A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in that position ought to behave.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive Dissonance Theory: The theory that people act to reduce discomfort (dissonance) when their thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For instance, when attitudes and actions clash, individuals can reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes.
Persuasion
Persuasion: The process of changing people's attitudes, which may potentially influence their actions.
Routes of Persuasion
Peripheral Route Persuasion: Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues such as a speaker’s attractiveness.
Central Route Persuasion: Occurs when people's thinking is influenced by considering evidence and arguments due to their interest in the topic.
Norms
Norms: Society’s understood rules for accepted and expected behavior, prescribing "proper" behavior in individual and social situations.
Conformity
Conformity: The adjustment of behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
Social Influence
Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
Informational Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person's willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality.
Obedience
Obedience: Complying with an order or command.
Social Facilitation
Social Facilitation: The enhanced performance on simple or well-learned tasks, and the worsened performance on difficult tasks, in the presence of others.
Social Loafing
Social Loafing: The tendency for individuals in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than when individually accountable.
Deindividuation
Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Group Polarization
Group Polarization: The enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.
Groupthink
Groupthink: A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Culture
Culture: The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Tight Culture: A culture with clearly defined and reliably imposed norms.
Loose Culture: A culture with flexible and informal norms.
Aggression
Aggression: Any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally.
Frustration-Aggression Principle: The principle stating that frustration, defined as the blocking of an attempt to achieve a goal, creates anger which can generate aggression.
Social Scripts
Social Script: A culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations.
Mere Exposure Effect
Mere Exposure Effect: The tendency for repeated exposure to novel stimuli to increase our liking of them.
Types of Love
Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a romantic relationship.
Companionate Love: The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Equity in Relationships
Equity: A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.
Altruism
Altruism: An unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
Bystander Effect
Bystander Effect: The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.
Social Exchange Theory
Social Exchange Theory: The theory that our social behavior is an exchange process aimed at maximizing benefits and minimizing costs.
Reciprocity Norm
Reciprocity Norm: An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
Social-Responsibility Norm
Social-Responsibility Norm: An expectation that people will help those needing their help.
Conflict
Conflict: A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.
Social Trap
Social Trap: A situation where two parties, by each pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.
Mirror-Image Perceptions
Mirror-Image Perceptions: Mutual views often held by conflicting parties, where each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful while viewing the other side as evil and aggressive.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A belief that leads to its fulfillment.
Superordinate Goals
Superordinate Goals: Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation to achieve.
GRIT
GRIT: Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction; a strategy designed to decrease international tensions.
Personality
Personality: An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Psychodynamic Theories
Psychodynamic Theories: Theories that focus on the unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experiences in shaping personality.
Psychoanalysis: Freud's theory which attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; involves techniques to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Unconscious
Unconscious: According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories; also, information processing of which we are unaware according to contemporary psychologists.
Free Association
Free Association: In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious where a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, regardless of how trivial or embarrassing.
Id, Ego, and Superego
Id: A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy striving to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle (demanding immediate gratification).
Ego: The partly conscious, executive part of personality that mediates the demands of the Id, the superego, and reality, operating on the reality principle to satisfy the Id’s desires in realistic ways.
Superego: The partly conscious part of personality representing internalized ideals, providing standards for judgment (the conscience) and future aspirations.
Defense Mechanisms
Defense Mechanisms: In psychodynamic theory, the ego’s protective methods for reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Repression: The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.
Collective Unconscious
Collective Unconscious: Carl Jung’s concept of an inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history.
Terror-Management Theory
Terror-Management Theory: A theory exploring emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of impending death related to death anxiety.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through stories they create about ambiguous scenes.
Projective Tests
Projective Test: A type of personality test, like the TAT or Rorschach, using ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of inner dynamics and explore the preconscious and unconscious mind.
Rorschach Inkblot Test: A specific projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach, intended to identify inner feelings by analyzing interpretations of 10 inkblots.
Humanistic Theories
Humanistic Theories: Theories focusing on the potential for healthy personal growth in personality.
Hierarchy of Needs
Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow's levels of human needs, represented as a pyramid where physiological needs form the base, taking priority until satisfied.
Self-Actualization
Self-Actualization: According to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met, characterized by the motivation to fulfill one’s potential.
Self-Transcendence
Self-Transcendence: The striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond oneself, as defined by Maslow.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Unconditional Positive Regard: A nonjudgmental, accepting attitude thought by Carl Rogers to aid in developing self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Self-Concept
Self-Concept: All thoughts and feelings regarding ourselves, answering the question, "Who am I?".
Traits and Personality Assessment
Trait: A characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act in certain ways, assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.
Personality Inventory: A questionnaire designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors, typically with true-false or agree-disagree items.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
MMPI: The most widely researched and clinically used personality test, originally developed for identifying emotional disorders but used for various other screening purposes.
Empirically Derived Test
Empirically Derived Test: A type of test (such as the MMPI) created by selecting items that discriminate between groups.
Big Five Factors
Big Five Factors: Five traits that describe personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, also referred to as the five-factor model.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Social-Cognitive Perspective: A view of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context.
Behavioral Approach
Behavioral Approach: A perspective focusing on the effects of learning on personality development.
Reciprocal Determinism
Reciprocal Determinism: The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment on personality development.
Self
Self: In modern psychology, considered the center of personality, organizing thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Spotlight Effect
Spotlight Effect: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others notice and evaluate our appearance and behaviors (presuming a "spotlight" shines on us).
Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem: Our feelings of high or low self-worth.
Self-Efficacy
Self-Efficacy: Our sense of competence and effectiveness regarding our abilities.
Self-Serving Bias
Self-Serving Bias: A tendency to perceive ourselves favorably, attributing successes to internal factors and failures to external ones.
Narcissism
Narcissism: An excessive self-love and self-absorption.
Cultural Perspectives
Individualism: A cultural pattern emphasizing personal goals over group goals and defining identity primarily in terms of unique personal attributes.
Collectivism: A cultural pattern prioritizing group goals (often related to family or work) over individual goals.
Motivation
Motivation: A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.
Instinct
Instinct: A complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.
Physiological Need
Physiological Need: A basic bodily requirement necessary for survival.
Drive-Reduction Theory
Drive-Reduction Theory: The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.
Homeostasis
Homeostasis: A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; regulation of body chemistry around a particular level.
Incentive
Incentive: A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
Yerkes-Dodson Law: The principle stating that performance increases with arousal only up to a point; after that, performance decreases.
Affiliation Need
Affiliation Need: The need to build and maintain relationships and feel part of a group.
Self-Determination Theory
Self-Determination Theory: The theory positing that we are motivated to satisfy needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
Types of Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation: The desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.
Extrinsic Motivation: The desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.
Ostracism
Ostracism: Deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups.
Achievement Motivation
Achievement Motivation: A desire for significant accomplishment, mastery of skills or ideas, control, and attaining high standards.
Grit
Grit: In psychology, the passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.
Glucose
Glucose: The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and serves as the primary source of energy for body tissues; low glucose levels trigger feelings of hunger.
Set Point
Set Point: The predetermined weight that an individual's body defends against deviation; below this weight, hunger increases and metabolic rate decreases to restore lost weight.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Basal Metabolic Rate: The body's resting rate of energy output.
Obesity
Obesity: Defined as a body mass index (BMI) measurement of 30 or higher, calculated from weight-to-height ratio; individuals with a BMI of 25 or higher are considered overweight.
Emotion
Emotion: A response of the whole organism involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience resulting from interpretations.
Polygraph
Polygraph: A machine used to detect lies by measuring emotion-linked changes in perspiration, heart rate, and breathing.
Facial Feedback Effect
Facial Feedback Effect: The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings, such as fear, anger, or happiness.
Behavior Feedback Effect
Behavior Feedback Effect: The tendency of behavior to influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions, both in ourselves and in others.